{Stubborn} Determined Dutchman's Puzzle!

Jake serviced a little Featherweight for a fellow Quilt guild member tonight and I had to give it a little test run. I decided to make my block for the Elgin Piecemaker's guild meeting for next week. We all agreed to make a red and white block. They will be assembled into a quilt to donate to the chemo unit at the local hospital. I browsed through a magazine of quilt blocks and came upon Dutchman's puzzle which I thought appropriate because of my Dutch heritage!! As I was assembling the four double flying geese units together, I realized that this was a 10" block, not a 12" one!! Too stubborn to start over, I added a strip around the block and now it's a Stubborn Dutchman's block. See Gail's block on her blog.

Gail posted a comment that said 'stubborn' has negative connotations and I should use 'determined' instead. I like that!! I will change it to Determined Dutchman's Puzzle!! LOL

Playing with Mini's.......

About 15 years ago, I made a diamond log cabin Christmas tree skirt and taught a class eventually to a few friends. The original instructions were on my old computer that was stolen. I didn't really want to make a whole new sample at this point so my brilliant husband suggested making a mini version since I love making miniatures. What a brainstorm!

Here is a photo of the original tree skirt:

Go ahead and ask why on earth I would put the dark side to the inside and the lighter side on the outside? There is a reason for that!! The carpet in our old house was very nice and thick and great for all the teenagers that would descend on our house at that time! However, it was that lovely 80's rust colour! I wanted to minimize the clash with the red so I put that side further under the tree :-). It does still bug me!! However, I do still put it under my tree each year!

Here is a photo of the diamonds for the mini tree skirt to be sewn together. The logs are 1/2" finished. I have a small tree so I'm hoping this will be a perfect little tree skirt for it :-)

I also made half diamond triangles, using Marci Baker's method and ruler and I'm hoping that they'll fit properly to made this one a hexagon shape. I'll keep you posted when I sew them together :-).

Leah's I spy quilt

Finally doing a blog post on the I spy quilt I made for my granddaughter, Leah, who started JK this year! First she came over to my house and chose the 4 1/2" blocks from my stash that she wanted to include in her quilt.

She had to stand on a sewing machine bench to reach for the top :-)

Hmmm....what else should we include?

I think this wall is getting a little full!


After all that hard work designing, a snack is in order:

The finished quilt (the colours are a little bit washed out because of the light coming into the studio):

The colours are little better in this closeup. I quilted funky flowers on the squares and leaves in the border.

Here is Leah trying out the quilt for size:

...and posing with her finished quilt:

Lauren got her quilt out too and we took a picture of her in front of her quilt as well:

Josh wanted to get in on the action too :-). This is the quilt I made for him when he was born and he took that one to school for his JK quilt:

This is the I spy quilt I made for Josh when he turned 1 year old. He was too young really as these squares are more generic for a young child, not necessarily things he really likes. It was fun to make them when they were older as they could help pick out the ones they liked best:

Nick and Christina's quilt

Friends, Nick and Christina, were married in August of this year and I made them a black and white quilt with a little red tossed in for their bed. I forgot to take a picture of the quilt as I was just finishing up the label minutes before we headed for the wedding! I will add one later. I had this quilt quilted by a friend on her long arm machine to speed up the process :-). Here are the blocks on my design wall before sewing them together. They are made with 2 1/2" x 4 1/2" rectangles. The pattern is called "Split Decision".

I used a lot of novelty prints with items of interest to either the bride or groom - motorcycle parts, dinosaurs, cats, music notes, treble clefs, bicycles, etc. I added a red batik border and then a larger border of treble clefs and a striped outer border, mitering the corners. This is actually a quick way to add borders.


A few more of the prints in the blocks (click on the photo to enlarge)

The quilting turned out really cool; loops on the blocks and large treble clefs in the borders:


Here you can see one of the treble clefs quilted in the border:

Plowing Match block finished

At the Elgin County Plowing Match, I bought a kit for the 2011 Plowing match quilt block competition. Last night three of us got together and made our blocks because they have to be there next week! Here is my block:

Gail posted pictures on her blog too of her block as well as our blocks in progress. I really like the colours in the kit this year. My block isn't absolutely square....I picked one with 8 set in triangles!! But, I wasn't going to take it out...I like the Dear Jane motto: "Finished is better than perfect!"